Brooke N. Wolford, PhD

Brooke N. Wolford, PhD

Statistical Geneticist at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology

How your electronic medical records could help biomedical research

less than 1 minute read

Published:

Much to the chagrin of many patients in America, digital medical records have phased out paper copies of health records in doctors’ offices across the nation. In my latest blog post for MiSciWriters I make a case for the exciting uses of these digital medical records—called electronic health records (EHRs). The post is the second of a three part series examining ancient DNA, EHRs, and the legacy of Neanderthal DNA in you and me.

You May Also Enjoy

Interpreting A Data Driven World

less than 1 minute read

Published:

I had the honor of being guest on the Perspective 2020 podcast hosted by my former UNC classmate Kara Marker Credle back in December 2020. We discussed living in a data driven world, both in general and during a pandemic. Read more

Memorial Day during a pandemic

8 minute read

Published:

Today is Memorial Day in the United States, a day when we honor those who lost their lives in service to our country. It is also a day we approach 100,000 COVID-19 deaths in the U.S. Yesterday, the NY Times memorialized just 1% of those deaths starting on the Sunday front page. If we add every U.S. military death from the beginning of the Korean War in 1950 through all wars and conflicts up to today, we arrive at a similar number of 102,483 deaths (Note: this value is based on this table and could be more or less depending on inclusion of MIA or other nuances). In three months we have lost nearly the amount of Americans as the military personnel we’ve lost in 70 years of conflicts. To memorialize the sacrifice of those who gave their lives for the U.S., we should use our hard-fought freedoms responsibly to help our society and economy move forward as safely as possible in the presence of SARS-CoV-2. I acknowledge that the majority of our country is being conscientious and generous in their sacrifices, and I empathize that everyone has their own unique situation, but we are all interconnected in this pandemic. I believe the following are things we can do to live up to the American way our service members fought and died for. Read more

Extraordinary claims require … evidence

19 minute read

Published:

In this blog post I discuss the credibility of the sources we turn to for evidence, and I provide a curation of resources for readers to explore claims in “Plandemic.” For the scientific community specifically, I summarize and comment on the lessons I’ve learned from “Plandemic”-related discourse the past week. I hope it will be relevant for science communication efforts during the pandemic! Read more

Remdesivir clinical trial & more

7 minute read

Published:

Anecdotal evidence of positive outcomes from the antiviral remdesivir (developed by Gilead Sciences Inc.) have emerged through compassionate use in the previous months, but we needed randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to judge efficacy, or how well the drug worked. A summary of results from a clinical trial in China was inadvertently posted by the World Health Organization last week and did not look too promising. You can read more from TIME. Today, April 29, 2020, a statement was released from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) summarizing the preliminary results from the use of remdesivir at 68 international sites. The science and medicine publication, STAT, covered it here. We can’t see the entire methodology to assess the study and analysis limitations, but here is a first pass at what we do know. Read more